October 20159The key became the diligent work to alignour executive team, compliance, retail operations, and sales strategy teams towards this roadmap. We developed a basic roadmap that provided an inventory of our current systems and mapped that to our target state.It was very important for our team to also have incremental, practical gates in this roadmap where each step could provide a tangible return on our investment--measured in increased customer opportunities, new account openings, or improved deposit and loan pipelines.We then evaluated providers that could meet the target state, ultimately reducing the number of point-solutions we were currently maintaining and providing a platform that could meet the omni-channel needs of sharing context between channels--so an account opening application for instance, could be started and saved in one channel and then retrieved and completed in another.Equally important for us was the ability to introduce this technology in incremental fashion--both from an effort standpoint as well as a financial investment standpoint. The lift-and-replace strategy was not an option for us as we execute several acquisitions a year. We also wanted to ensure our investment was put towards the channels and limited any further investment required on our core systems.In knowing the importance that our associates put on mobility of a solution platform, we also began to take incremental steps towards deploying the necessary infrastructure to support the rollout of tablets to our associates. To ensure our own IT infrastructure would not be a limiting factor in deploying the latest market solutions, we worked in parallel to ensure we could initially enable corporate email, intranet browser applications and file shares via tablets. This included basic steps with mobile device management software and working with our IT team to validate and verify network and user authorizations for our users that may be using a tablet device both inside and outside our networks. With the maturity of these MDM solutions, this infrastructure step was smooth, even with our limited IT staff--but it gained us a significant lift in proving to our business and executive teams that providing mobility to our workforce was achievable.With an ROI that allowed us to reflect both revenue drivers and cost reducers, we were able to eliminate perceived complexity and pursue deploying mobility solutions to our associates.. End-the-life of certain point solutions. Reduce associate training. Measured goal to increase product referrals Measured goal to increase referral conversions. Empower our Universal Banker strategy with practical technology . Provide a Sales and Service platform with mobility to reduce branch and staff costs Our solution, which is capable of being deployed on desktop and tablet devices has begun to transform our sales strategy and powered our Universal Banker rollout. Our investment in this area has already been paid back as we have deployed a Sales and Service platform, which has increased our referrals and our conversion rate to opened accounts. This has translated into bottom line impact.What has been a tremendous win for us is the bottom line impact from a platform that also excites our customers, associates, and CEO. And while we are only in the early stages of our roadmap, we have been able to achieve many goals that support a practical approach. This has allowed us to translate a nebulous "omni-channel" buzzword into a tangible approach for our bank from which we can continue to build upon.Keys to our path. Inventory of current systems and platforms used by consumer and associates. Inventory of high-level functions used on those systems . Defining a target state of consolidation (i.e. common account opening across channels inside and outside the branch). Identifying technology solutions that align to our needs. Defining a basic roadmap based on priorities. Assigning measured value to each gate of the roadmap--to not only measure success in a tangible way but also limit our financial exposure when introducing new technology to avoid the big bang approach. Aligning IT early in the process to enable mobility solutions. Aligning executive and operational teams, with full transparency BCIt is our market key, and probably yours, to differentiate our services and provide a more personalized experience for existing and new customersMichael Bryan
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